Fact check: Did Coca-Cola ever contain cocaine?

By
Sellassie Sokpe
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After striking a $44-billion deal to buy social media company Twitter, the world’s richest man Elon Musk is on a tweeting spree on the microblogging site.

Recently, Musk had tweeted that he would be buying Coca-Cola next to “put cocaine back in”. The tweet has gone viral, like all his other posts, and both #CocaCola and #cocaine are now trending.

Coca-Cola’s history has been well-documented. The drink was invented in 1885 by John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, who made the original formula in his backyard.

Pemberton’s recipe contained cocaine in the form of an extract of the coca leaf, which inspired the “Coca” part of the beverage’s name. The “Cola” comes from the kola nut (which contains caffeine, another stimulant).

When Coca-Cola was invented, cocaine was legal and a common ingredient in medicines. People thought it was safe to use in small amounts.

But the drug was eliminated from the recipe just after the turn of the century. The cocaine amount in Coca-Cola was also reduced over time, and the drink was made cocaine-free by 1929. It was the Prohibition Era in the US then.

We rate the claim that the first bottle of Coca-Cola contained 3.5 grams of cocaine as MISSING CONTEXT because without additional information it could be misleading. While Coca-Cola did once contain some cocaine, it’s very unlikely the drink contained that much.

The company website still maintains “Coca-Cola does not contain cocaine or any other harmful substance, and cocaine has never been an added ingredient in Coca‑Cola”.

The claim: The first bottle of Coca-Cola contained 3.5 grams of cocaine 

Claims that Coca-Cola contains the illicit drug cocaine have existed since the company’s founding. Now, they’re circulating on social media. 

“The first bottle of Coca-Cola from 1894 contained around 3.5 grams of cocaine,” the Facebook post, shared by 3,000 people, reads. “Explains why our parents & grandparents could walk to & from school, uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefoot.”

The person who posted the meme did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment. 

Early Coca-Cola contained cocaine

Coca-Cola did, in fact, once contain cocaine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. When the popular drink was invented, it was first marketed as a “patent medicine”; cocaine was legal at the time and was a common ingredient in medicines, according to the institute. 

The cocaine in the drink –  and later, its removal –  presented a “delicate public relations problem” for the company in its early years, according to the book “For God, Country and Coca-Cola.” 

“If the company responded to attacks by telling the truth, they would be admitting that the drink did once have cocaine in it,” author Mark Pendergrast wrote in “For God, Country and Coca-Cola.” “The implication would be that they had removed it because it was harmful, which might even open the door to lawsuits. Besides, it was unthinkable to admit that Coca-Cola had ever been anything but pure and wholesome.”

According to the book, John Candler, grandson of Coca-Cola founder Asa G. Candler, attempted to rewrite history by denying the drink ever had cocaine in it. 

Company spokesmen told The New York Times in 1988 that the original recipe, brewed in 1886, included cocaine, but the drug was eliminated from the recipe just after the turn of the century.

In response to USA TODAY’s request for comment, Ann Moore, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, said the drink “does not contain cocaine or any other harmful substance, and cocaine has never been an added ingredient in Coca-Cola.”

The cocaine in the drink was more specifically ecgonine, a precursor to cocaine, according to Snopes. It was derived from extract from the coca plant. 

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Although coca leaves are illegal in the United States, the company still uses them to make their famous drink after they’ve been “de-cocainized” by Stepan Chemical Co. in Maywood, New Jersey, according to Scientific American. 

Cocaine formerly in drink likely much less than 3.5 grams

While there’s no way to know for sure exactly how much cocaine was once in the popular soda, it’s unlikely the amount reached 3.5 grams. 

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According to Snopes, which examined the claim in 1999, there was just 1/400 of a grain of cocaine per ounce of syrup by 1902 and the drink was cocaine-free by 1929, when the de-cocainization process was perfected.

Our rating: Missing context

We rate the claim that the first bottle of Coca-Cola contained 3.5 grams of cocaine as MISSING CONTEXT because without additional information it could be misleading. While Coca-Cola did once contain some cocaine, it’s very unlikely the drink contained that much.

Our fact-check sources: 

Note: This fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook